Gold plated jade earrings: a large ball of water green stone hung from a wide flat gilt hook, curved over the top of the ear.
The plating is announced by my supplier, with no thickness specified. Elsewhere in this catalogue, when nothing is announced, I simply write gold tone, and the page says so.
The stone is the largest in the section, which will make the weighing more reliable than elsewhere. Why I write it down.
Gold plated jade earrings: a large ball of water green stone, smooth and domed, hung from a wide flat gilt hook that curves over the whole top of the ear. The stone is the largest in the earring section, and it is seen from a distance.
In four lines
A large water green ball, the biggest stone in the section.
A wide flat gilt hook, curved over the top of the ear.
Gold plated as announced by my supplier, thickness not specified.
The record will be published: the ball comes off, so it can be weighed.
Gold plating announced, and what that is worth
My supplier announces a gold plating. I take up his word, and I stop exactly where what I know stops. A plating is a thickness, and a thickness is measured in microns: it is what separates a gilding that lasts years from one that lasts months. That thickness is not specified.
On the other pieces in this catalogue my supplier announces nothing at all, and I then simply write gold tone. The difference between the two pages is not cosmetic: here there is a declaration, elsewhere there is none, and the record says so in those terms.
In practise a plating wears first at the points of friction, and on an ear hook that is the top of the curve, where it bears. Take the earrings off before showering and store them flat: that is all that prolongs a gilding. How to store a jade piece.
The same model exists in silver
This ball is sold under two mounts, and that is the only difference between the two references: the silver version carries exactly the same stone under a silver hook of the same design.
The choice is made on complexion more than on quality. Gold warms a darker or golden skin, silver brightens a fair or pink skin, and there is no difference of strength between the two: the hook is hollow in both cases.
If you are hesitating, simply look at the pieces you already wear. Mixing the two metals works very well, but not on the same ear.
A large stone, and a good measurement
The ball is clearly larger than those of the other pairs in the section, and that has an unexpected consequence: the weighing will be more reliable here. The heavier a sample, the less noisy the measurement, and it is one of the three limits of the method that fades away here.
The green is pale, milky, with a translucency that shows clearly around the drilling. That variation follows the thickness, which is the behaviour of a colour present in the mass rather than laid on the surface.
What is sold under the name of jade is very often serpentine, around 2.6, or dyed quartzite, around 2.65, when nephrite starts at 2.90. The figure will be published in the record with its date. The method, with its three limits, and what separates the two minerals.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
Water green
Stone shape
Round beads
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Ear wire
Metal
Gold tone, alloy not stated
Setting
Drilled stone
Worn by
Women
Mineral family
Calcic amphibole, Sodium aluminium pyroxene
Hardness (Mohs)
6 to 7
Reference density
2.90 to 3.36 g/cm³
Toughness
Exceptional, interlocking crystals
Treatment
Not determined
Origin
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to jade
What follows changes register, and I flag it rather than blending it into the rest of the page. Nothing here is demonstrated. These are customs and beliefs, which I report because they are part of the history of this stone. No piece in this shop is sold as a remedy, and I claim no effect for this one.
Jade at the earsThe jueshi, slit jade rings worn at the ear, are among the oldest known Chinese ornaments: examples are found in Neolithic burials, long before the discs and the belt pendants.
Gold and stoneGold long counted for less than jade in the Chinese hierarchy of materials: a proverb says that gold has a price where jade has none. Mounting a stone in a precious metal is a habit more Western than Chinese.
The water green of scholarly tasteVery pale jades were long preferred to vivid greens in cultivated Chinese taste, where discretion counts more than brilliance. The fashion for intense green is recent, and largely commercial.
A stone of moral virtueIn Confucian thought, jade is associated with qualities of character rather than effects on the body: uprightness, constancy, restraint. It is the best documented meaning of them all.
Dispatched within 48 hours of your order being confirmed, for delivery within 14 days from dispatch. I keep no buffer stock, and I won’t promise a timeframe I couldn’t meet.
Postage charges
€6.99 to any destination, free on orders of €47 or more to France, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg. The exact amount appears in the cart before you pay.
The packaging, and why it matters
Every piece ships in its own pouch, kept apart from the others. This isn’t about presentation: the hardness of jade is ordinary, between 6 and 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite, and the quartz in everyday dust sits at 7. Two pieces of jewellery that travel together end up scratching each other.
Fourteen days to change your mind
With no need to explain yourself. An email is enough to open a return, there is no form to fill in. Return postage is at your expense, unless the piece doesn’t match its listing or arrives damaged.
Warm water, mild soap, a soft cloth. A very soft brush for the hollows of a carving. That’s all, and it’s enough.
What you must never do, and why
No ultrasonic cleaner, no steam, no solvent, no heat source. This isn’t a token precaution: the treatment status of my pieces is not established. My supplier doesn’t know, and weighing establishes the mineral without saying anything about a possible resin impregnation. Resin tolerates neither heat nor solvents, so every piece is handled as though it might contain some. The information sheet on treatments.
Scratches, and where they come from
Jade is tough, meaning very hard to break: its interlocking crystal structure resists fracturing, and that is why axes could be shaped from it in the Neolithic. Its hardness, on the other hand, is ordinary, 6 to 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite. The quartz in everyday dust sits at 7: that is what dulls jade, not knocks. The difference between the two.
Day to day
Put the piece on after perfume and cream, never before. Take it off for housework, gardening and sport, where the knocks against corners happen. Store each piece on its own, in its pouch. On a strand of beads, the thread wears out before the stone: it gets restrung, and there is nothing abnormal about that.
My name is Jade. I’m French, from Morbihan, and based in Tallinn. I choose the pieces and have them set: I mine nothing, I cut nothing, and I don’t do the metalwork myself. The work I do is the sorting, and with this material that is what decides everything.
I am neither a gemmologist, nor a lapidary, nor a therapist, and I don’t claim to be.
I weigh, I don’t certify
Before putting a reference online, I order one example of it for myself. When it reaches me unset, I weigh it in air, then suspended from a thread in a glass of water: the ratio of the two masses gives the density, and that figure separates jadeite, nephrite, serpentine and dyed quartzite without ambiguity.
One example per reference, not every piece. I don’t handle the piece that goes out to you, and I would rather say so than let you believe otherwise. The method, with its three limits.
What I can’t know
The treatment status of my pieces. My supplier doesn’t know, and the scales say nothing about it: they establish the mineral, not the resin impregnation. Only infrared spectroscopy in a laboratory would settle it, and I don’t have that done. So you will never read “jadeite A”, “type A” or “untreated” on this site. The information sheet.
Where my jade comes from
No Burmese jadeite, and the first reason is a legal one. Not the reason you read everywhere: the JADE Act of 2008 did indeed ban these stones in the United States, but that ban was lifted on 7 October 2016. What applies today dates from 8 April 2021: the US Treasury sanctioned Myanma Gems Enterprise, the state-owned company that controls the Burmese gem trade. So there is no general ban, but an American is not allowed to trade with that entity, and a stone never tells you where it has passed through. One single supply chain for ten markets: it has to hold up for the most demanding of them. When an origin isn’t confirmed to me in writing, the listing doesn’t state it. My sourcing policy.
